Deep Well to Flowing River

Maybe you know the painful sensation of not being enough. You were cut from the team after giving it your all in tryouts, or you made the team, but then dropped an important pass and let the team down. 

You are in a relationship with someone who always seems to be disappointed with you, and no matter what you try, you can’t quite seem to make them happy. 

You’re smart, conscientious, and you work hard, and as a result you do very well in school, but no matter how much you study, or how confident you feel, you can’t quite get everything right all the time. 

You worked for months for the performance and knew your part perfectly. You’d done it right a hundred times, but somehow when the lights were on, you made a mistake! 

In these scenarios and a thousand others, we are confronted with the harsh reality that we don’t have what it takes. The enemy of our souls loves to leverage this reality in his favor to get us to turn away from the love and grace of God by suggesting this seemingly innocent little idea, “you should be enough.” 

But he’s a liar! If I was supposed to be enough, I wouldn’t need God or anyone else, and I could do it all in my own strength. How would a God of love create a universe where we didn’t need to rely on Him; a reality where there was no drive for us to work together and stay together? Even in the Garden of Eden before the fall, Adam was not enough. God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Men and women are made in God’s image; we are made to love each other and God. 

No, you are not supposed to be enough. You are supposed to love one another, carry each other’s burdens, and love and trust God. Our nagging sense that we don’t have what it takes is actually the corrupted version of the beacon that points us back to God.  

When Jesus saves us, everything changes. In John 7:38 it says, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 

 

In other words, when we meet Jesus at the well, like the woman in John 4, we encounter the living water, and our thirst is satisfied once and for all. But not just that, in God’s mercy, we also become vessels that carry living water to all those around us. Like the woman in John 4 who went and told everyone about Jesus, we become the source of God’s love to those around us.  

 

Now, when you fail you can receive the healing love of Jesus and get back up. When you are hurt by others you can let the love of Jesus flow out of you in forgiveness and heal that relationship. 

 

Jesus describes the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives in Galatians 5:22-23 as, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” You may notice that they are all expressed in community. 

 

When Jesus saves us, He doesn’t eliminate our dependency, He redeems it. He doesn’t make us perfect; He helps us love others, be more patient with them, be kinder and more faithful and gentler toward them. 

 

We come to Jesus, the deep well, and drink of living water, and then we become a river of living water flowing to the world around us.